To drink water out of the bathroom tap

[Hihosilver123]

I live in London, and my house is on mains water. At night, I fill my glass with water from the bathroom tap. My friend says you shouldn’t do that and should only use the kitchen tap. Surely, on mains water, the water is the same from every tap?

I would like to know this too! My friend told me off for it

I live in London and use the bathroom tap everyday. Where does she think the water comes from?

She probably grew up in a house with a tank for upstairs and doesn’t know the difference. If it’s mains water you’re fine.

I drink water from the bathroom tap too op as I have a tablet to take early morning. Have been doing this for years and have come to no harm !

It's fine to use the bathroom tap!

I extensively researched this. As long as you don’t use a water tank this is fine.

It depends if it comes from a tank or the mains. Mains connection is safe to drink. The tank can be a bit manky.

This

I voted yabu.......and I grew up with a water tank in the loft and remember running a bath with bones and feathers in.....turned. out a fledgling starling had fallen into the tank .....different era.... you will be fine!!! Xx

I think it stems back to having water tanks in the loft of homes - birds/mice could get in, die and rot some tanks were of dubious materials. Fears of contamination.

Now most homes don't have water tanks and water is from the same mains, so we don't need to worry.

I was brought up not to drink water from the bathroom. However, dh disabused me of the notion that it was unsafe. Total game changer!

Yeah, it's definitely safe.

People get confused because if they have a hot water tank, then generally they have a cold water tank in the loft to feed the hot water tank. But the cold water taps in your bathroom are fed straight from the mains, not from the tank in the loft.

I was always under the impression you could drink water from the bathroom but it was advisable to use the kitchen tap because the water was fresher.
Certainly I think the water from the kitchen tap tastes much better so that's what I always use.

As PP mentioned, years ago most houses had water tanks for bathrooms and the kitchen came from the mains.
The tanks could have all sorted of bugs and bacteria.
I was always told not to when younger, on the rare occasion I did, it always tasted a bit odd but I think it was purely psychological!

Depends, do you have a tank or a water softener? Like a tank, water softeners tend to be grim and you wouldn't want to be drinking from it.

The last plumber we had round said we shouldn't use the bathroom taps. I think it was something about hardening or softening the water and that the kitchen water was treated but not the bathroom water. I think we may have quite a convoluted plumbing set up though.

I live in a block of flats where some flats still get their bathroom water from a tank on the roof, and other (refurbed flats) are connected to the mains.

It causes quite funny What’s app messages in our blocks group as some people can’t get their heads around the fact that even in one building different rules might apply.

I was always told this, I think upstairs used to come from the tank in the attic but it’s almost never the case nowadays. I still can’t stomach the idea of bathroom water though.

I suppose bathroom taps could be more likely to have airborne particles on from open-lidded flushing, if anyone has had d&v (like you shouldn't keep toothbrushes next to your loo) otherwise it's fine to drink from any mains tap instead of one fed by header tank.

Upstairs water normally comes from the Header tank, not the freshest an you have no idea what has got into your tank.

This is not always the case. Some cold-water tanks feed the cold bathroom tap!

If the bathroom cold is coming straight from the mains there us no problem. It’s the same water as from the kitchen tap.

Years ago, the bathroom water was held in the water storage, the downstairs was on the mains water. Today, all water is on mains and not stored. So now it is safe to drink out of the bathroom taps, however, at my age I still have to force myself that the bathroom is OK to drink

I don't care about the facts but I just can't do this. Even dying of thirst I'd drag myself downstairs.

Lots of houses still have tanks. We have a 90s build and there’s a cold water tank in the loft that feeds the hot water tank as well as all taps in the house except kitchen. So we don’t drink bathroom water (at least not since I discovered we have a tank-I did for a few months as I didn’t know tanks in our sort of setup was a thing! It’s sealed though so no dead birds…).

Nope, not all cold is on mains (see my previous post). Feeder cold tanks are quite common apparently.